This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
When a person requires a pair of spectacles, he usually visits successively an optometrist for an eye exam and an optician who is on hand to assist him in selecting and fitting the new spectacles. In particular, the optician must realize certain measurements on position of said spectacle frame with respect to the eyes of the person and gathers the results of these measurements with other data needed to produce the lens adapted to the need and the wishes of the person. One of the tasks of the optician is to check the consistency of the selection of frame, lens options and prescription.
More particularly, FIG. 1 illustrates the data flow of the process of ordering spectacle lens according to the prior art.
First, the person (depicted as “wearer” below) goes to an eye exam at an optometrist and gets from the optometrist a lens prescription generally on a hand-written form. Then, the wearer visits the optician for selecting spectacle frame and spectacle lenses for equipping the selected frame. For that, the wearer brings the lens prescription to the optician. Conventionally, the optician directly measures the various parameters on the spectacle wearer, using a measuring instrument. Another disadvantage is that the measurements are not taken in the natural position for the spectacle wearer, but rather at a position for which the spectacle wearer is somewhat constrained, with his head being kept at a fixed position, various measuring devices being present in the visual field, etc. The optician compiles the prescription, the frame selected by the wearer and the lens options selected by the wearer (lens weight and thickness, scratch coating and impact resistance, tint color, anti-reflection coating, and multi-focal lenses, etc. . . . ). Generally, the optician provides advices to the wearer for optimizing the frame selection with respect to the lens prescription and the lens options on the basis of the various wearer selections.
This whole process can be long: it involves a transcription and a check of the lens prescription by the optician and a review of many different frames made physically available to the wearer by the optician. Then, the optician has further to collect the lens options selected by the wearer.
At least, once a frame is selected, the optician also generates a set of data required for designing a spectacle lens. These data have various types and comprise at least: 1/ wearer data including prescription data and wearer lens options, 2/ frame data describing the geometry of the frame selected by the wearer and finally 3/ position information related to the frame position with respect to the face of the wearer at wearing time. From a careful analysis of this set of data (for example consistency between frame curving contour and prescription) and by checking in lens manufacturer data books, the optician can advise the wearer on the possible trade-offs and finally orders spectacle lenses to a lens manufacturing side. The position information includes at least the distance between the pupils and the segment heights. Such measurements are critical for the proper manufacture of the eyeglasses for the selected frames. If such measurements are not properly taken, the resulting eyeglasses become useless to the customer, and time and money are wasted. Such measurements are usually taken manually with a ruler or with the aid of various measurement devices. All such methods require skill and great care to achieve acceptable accuracy. In practice, such accuracy is not always attained.
From FIG. 1, it appears that in the usual lens ordering process, a majority of tasks is concentrated at the optician side.
This tasks dispatch and the duration of these individual successive tasks do not benefit the wearer: quite often the wearer may have to wait before being helped by an optician. As he must physically try-on each of the frames selected for consideration; he must preview each tried-on frame in a mirror without wearing his right prescription lenses, which can be difficult for some and inconvenient for most. Moreover, the optician has also to perform the manual measurements mentioned above (including an acquisition of the 3D shape of the selected frame for lens edging purpose).
On another level, one observes that customers generally want to have a high degree of autonomy when they visit a store to make a purchase: They like to manipulate items, try them, wear them. Thus the wearer wishes to try pairs of glasses on his own, at his own pace. The wearers may also prefer to make their purchase at a time that is not constrained by open hours of an optician's shop, for example by selecting glasses and purchasing it at night rather than during the day. This empowerment of the client is a reality for tens of years. This is a general trend of trade leading to development of self-service stores and more services online ordering for many types of trade and services. Another advantage of the invention is to propose an organization of tasks necessary for ordering of glass and/or glasses that makes possible the satisfaction of customer requirements on autonomy.
The current organization of lens ordering process is neither convenient for the opticians because opticians have to perform a high number of non added-value and tedious jobs before ordering lens such as for example 1/ transcription of the hand-written prescription, 2/ assistance to the frame choice by customers, sometimes indecisive from a large number of frame styles and manufacturers; or 3/ once a particular frame is selected, the optician must obtain certain manual measurements in regard with the frame shape or the position of frame with respect to frame.
The European patent EP0851265B1 describes a method for reducing the duration of the step of obtaining precise frame shape information for edging purpose without measuring the shape of a spectacle frame in a spectacle store.
The European patent EP0680722B1 proposes a system to automatically obtain the eye/frame measurements by way of pupil and frame detection. In this method the image is scaled due to the presence of a scale of a known size inside the image enabling the magnification factor of the image (knowing the focal length, etc.) to be determined.
But, none of these documents does propose a global task dispatch for shortening the whole process of lens ordering which reduces significantly the workload of the optician.